All’s fair in love and war at the 2012 Franschhoek Literary Festival

The annual Franschhoek Literary Festival features an array of topics from hot politics to cool poetry, love stories to the horrors of war.

The festival takes place from 11 – 13 May.

Books are often the inspiration for movies, but in Rhumba, Michele Magwood talks to Elaine Proctor, a South African film-maker living in London, about the process of turning a film script into a novel about a boy’s search for his mother through an immigrant’s nightmare alleviated by friendship and redemption.

Happiness is a Four-Letter Word will have Arja Salafranca chatting to Cynthia Jele about the love story that won the 2011 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Africa section.

Countless soldiers have fought and died in wars down the centuries. This year, several sessions at the FLF honour their sacrifices.

In 20th century wars, historians Bill Nasson and Mark Connelly will criss-cross the century from the Anglo-Boer conflict to the Falklands War. Angola’s long shadow will revisit the malignant scars of the Border War with Brent Meersman, Mark Behr, Johan Vlok Louw, photographer John Liebenberg and his co-author on Bush of Ghosts, Patricia Hayes. Mark Behr will also talk to James Whyle about The Book of War, set during the mid-19th century War of the Prophet in the Eastern Cape.

And there’s much, much more: eminent authors debating the direction of our country, some of SA’s top novelists, crime, satire and state secrets…

The full programme of the 2012 Franschhoek Literary Festival is online atwww.flf.co.za with bookings open on www.webtickets.co.za

Published at artslink